Chapter Text
Spiders, it turned out, really were everywhere. He’d known they might have to fight spiders in Aeor -- the Might Nein had already found one. What he hadn’t expected was the vast chamber choked with webbing. Frost coated the silken strands, turning them crystaline in the warm glow of his Dancing Lights. Essek shied closer to him.
“How big is this room?” Caleb asked. It went on past the radius of his lights. Either lots of spiders or one really big spider. Maybe lots of big spiders, even.
“I cannot tell. The web gets too dense to see more than maybe fifty feet out.” Essek glanced above them. “Or up.”
“Still not afraid of spiders?” Caleb poked. Essek shot him a small smile.
“Ask me again once we pass out of here.”
They were quiet as they traversed the room, following the smooth-paved road that, in theory, would take them to the next sector. Caleb took point, methodically clearing their way of stray wisps of silk with a flame cantrip.
He felt the tug of...something. A string pulling taught. It was like he dreamt of the moment a hundred times. He had no way of describing it, but he’d already seen himself turn a thousand different ways.
That string pulled so tight, then all at once it snapped. He turned. He glimpsed movement above him, just barely. It tasted like Essek’s magic
Essek, who was no longer behind him..
Caleb’s gaze jerked up toward where he’d seen the movement. Nothing now, but he knew. Somehow, he knew unerringly Essek had gone the way of the movement. He traded out the warm glow of his Dancing Lights for the crisp cool light of the driftglobe. The fly spell came easily to his lips.
His inexplicable knowledge was only supported by the tunnel amongst all the webbing, leading up and through the ceiling. He followed, not bothering with stealth; his light would give him away, and Essek’s magic still echoed through his bones despite his absence. The tunnel twisted and wound, web even here, before opening into a large chamber.
He heard a heavy thud.
His light cast long shadows across the floor. In that steady play of light and dark, he saw a limp form.
Essek lay utterly still in the center of the chamber, red eyes wide. Unseeing? the white light of Caleb's driftglobe caught on the faintest threads of silver across him -- a gossamer-fine layer of webbing.
Was he breathing? Caleb couldn’t tell in the faint light.
Much as he wished to run to him, he knew bait when he saw it. There was nothing he could do for Essek now, whether he was breathing or not. Rage was as hot as his flames. It helped bury the fear that had a choke-hold on his throat.
He raised his light, searching for what could only be a monstrously big spider to have taken a grown elf entirely off his feet.
He kept an eye to the ceiling as he scanned the room, knowing it would be the most likely direction. In one of the pockets of his coat, he wrapped his fingers in a cat's-cradle. Fire had been working well against the sticky threads, and his Web of Fire had the precision to avoid hitting Essek.
The silence stretched for several long seconds.
A sigh echoed from the darkness.
“Leave, rivvil. He’s not yours anymore.” a feminine voice came from up and out of his circle of light. His eyes snapped toward the sound.
The … thing … practically dripped from the ceiling, eerily graceful on the single silvery thread that held it. It settled with careful steps over Essek’s still form.
The harsh shadows cast by the globe did no favors to the scene.
Perhaps she had been beautiful once. Echoes of it still remained. The frosty white light lit silver across her dusky skin, just as it did Essek’s. She was garbed in the same delicate threads that surrounded her. Her snow white hair, laced into tiny braids like webbing over her scalp, fell past her hips.
Hips that warped and meshed into the top of a bulbous, furred spider.
Eight spindly legs supported her bloated form, poised carefully over Essek’s body. He could just glimpse a long, hooked barb jutting from her abdomen.
He’d read of something similar once. Something pre-calamity, from when the drow were still subjegated by the Spider Queen. Some sort of punishment for her clerics who fell out of favor. Elves were long-lived, but not that long-lived. How old could their aberrations grow?
Her eyes glinted with the same red iris of drow in the dark. She watched him unerringly, a look of mild annoyance painted on her face.
“You are uninvited. Leave.”
He hadn’t expected intelligence.
“Give him back.”
She cocked her head at him.
“I’ve more claim to him than you ever did, colbluth.”
“He belongs to himself. Let him go.”
She laughed at him, leaned forward at the waist.
“He belongs, male, to me now.”
He needed her to move. With her directly over Essek, he couldn’t risk a spell. But if she was intelligent, she could be reasoned with.
“Why do you want him?”
She hummed, leaning back, less aggressive now.
“I don’t think you can understand. It’s been so long since I’ve seen one of my kin, and I’m so. very. lonely.” She punctuated each word with a step forward. Good. Caleb retreated, hoping it would encourage her advancement. A few more steps and he’d be safe to cast.
She didn’t follow, though. She kept Essek in the cage of her legs, stinger almost directly above him. Caleb let the cat's-cradle slip from his fingers; the risk of hitting Essek was too high. Instead, he gripped a fistful of phosphorus.
With a word -- and a silent apology to Essek -- the driftglobe flared bright as the sun. whatever she was, she was still part drow, and if those familiar red irises were anything to go off then the light would be just as painful to her.
Sure enough, she shrieked and threw up an arm to guard her eyes. As she moved, Caleb brought up his phosphorus-coated palm and dug two fingers into the center with a deft twist.
Flame sprung to life under her: a circle of fire ringing Essek, angled so none of the heat would touch him. She kept her hand up even as she scrambled to escape the Wall of Fire, her shout turning into an ear-splitting wail.
“Wizard,” She shrieked, "I'll eat your hands first!” She moved, scuttling frightfully fast towards him.
She caught one of his arms, lifting him nearly off his feet as she sunk razor teeth into his forearm. He yelped as he felt her scrape bone. He focused a brief moment, the stone in his bag flaring briefly warm, and his plans melted away from him along with his fear. All that was left was an animalistic rage as his form swelled into an enormous ape.
She snarled something foreign, but the somatics were familiar to the fading, thinking part of his mind. Something Caduceus had cast once. Somewhere, some part of him recognised the Harm spell just before it hit. It was his last coherent thought before agony set in and washed away everything but “rage” and “protect”.
The fight slipped away from him. Pain. The heavy blows of his fists. Rage and rage and rage.
Agony.
And then knowing washed back over him as his form died.
He was under her. The simpler mind of the ape had guarded him from the fear. Now, her blood covered face snarled at him. That stinger dove toward him.
And it happened again. He could see that barb plunge toward him a thousand times, watched as the poison stilled his body for her to ravage. It happened over and over again until, all at once, she missed. Something snapped, and Essek’s magic washed over him again. those thousand potential hits shattered. The stinger scraped against stone as Caleb rolled away.
She snarled something and waved a hand. The wounds on her body knit closed. One snapped leg popped back into place. Shit. Cleric. Right. The cat's-cradle was back around his fingers. He slammed it down and undid all that fresh healing in a column of flame.
She screamed and was on him again. He flung up a Shield as her teeth raked for him once more. Tears washed down her face from squinting past the bright light, likely the only reason she’d missed despite the spell. His palm was still coated in phosphorus. Not true dust, but close enough.
Change, he willed. Be dust.
The spell hit, eerie green against the pure white from the globe. Her scream echoed through the chamber. It somehow seemed to last even as her form crumbled into dust and pale flecks of ash.
For a moment, all he could do was breathe. Then he was scrambling, knife already in hand as he skidded on his knees to Essek’s side.
“I’ve got you, I’ve got you.”
Breath was shallow, but still there. Eyes, silver now in the light, squinted up at him through tears. He cursed himself silently and spoke the command word that would dim the driftglobe. Should’ve been his first move.
He brushed the tear tracks away as he worked the knife under the hair-thin threads of webbing. They kept catching the blade. Finally, he growled in frustration and dropped the knife all together. He grabbed two fistfulls of web. His hands lit with a low flame and the threads turned to smoke in his palms.
“I’ve got you.”